This invention relates to fishing reels having means to induce line drag and in particular to fishing reels having clutch means operably connecting a line handling member to driving means, with the clutch means inducing the line drag.
Conventional fishing reels of both the spinning and spin cast type have drag inducing means which typically consist of friction discs alternately keyed to the spool and reel housing. This location of the drag inducing means has created two problems. First, as the line is unwound from the spool by a running fish the circumference of the windings on the spool decreases. Because it takes the same rotational force to overcome the frictional resistance to each revolution, and because as the winding's diameter decreases the length of line released for each revolution decreases, it will take more force per unit of line released to overcome the drag on the line the further the fish runs. A typical reel may have an increase in drag from a full spool to an almost empty spool of about 300 percent. This is particularly troublesome to those sport fishermen who, in catching large fish on low test lines, initially adjust the line drag to slightly less than the tensile strength of the line.
The second problem caused by existing drag inducing means is the twisted line or "bird's nest." In present fishing reels the line is twisted as it is rewound by the line handling member, but this is compensated for by untwisting as the line is cast. However, each time the line is unwound against the drag there is no untwisting, with the result that as a fish is played, i.e., alternately allowed to run and then reeled in, there is cummulative twisting with no compensating untwisting. The line eventually becomes so twisted that any momentary slack on the line will result in a coiling of the slack line into a jumble called a bird's nest.